obobski
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Posts posted by obobski
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Need more information about the machine - which specific Core 2 Duo, what graphics adapter, what kind of expansion slots, what size power supply, is it a conventional desktop/deskside case or is it slim profile, etc? The "OptiPlex 380" can encompass a relatively wide range of configurations, and unfortunately some of them will have little to no upgrade paths for what you're after.
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The 290/390 are power hungry relative to the 900-series (IOW the 900-series is more power efficient), but they're not as ridiculous as high-end dual-GPU boards of recent memory (e.g. GTX 590, 690, Titan Z, 5970, 7990/8990, 295X2). Max board TDP is 300W (by spec), and real-world power consumption will be more in the 100-200W range unless you're putting the GPU to 100% usage. My 290X reports a measly 60W consumption (they have on-card power usage monitoring; the nVidia cards have this too) running Fallout 3 on Ultra with 4x SSAA at 1080p, for example, and running Skyrim the entire machine only consumes around 250W AC-side (knock ~18% off for the PSU and you have a DC-side estimate). With an honest 550W PSU it shouldn't be any trouble to run a single 200-300W PCIe card plus the 60-80W of the CPU, single hard-drive, etc but that 600-700 range will give you more room to grow if you want to add things down the line. If you're going after a 2/3-way multi-GPU configuration that's a much more significant discussion and I'd probably just skip the hassle and buy a 1kW PSU assuming your site wiring can handle it (it has to be able to supply ~10-12A continuously). The 900-series, by contrast have max TDPs more in the 150-220W range, so they do a little better in terms of max-out power draw, but have equally modern power management features to the AMD, so like the AMD will drop power consumption pretty significantly when not maxed-out (and Skyrim will likely not max either card out).
Give this a perusal wrt power draw:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/page7.html
I didn't see (and they may not have specified) if this is AC-side or DC-side; let's assume worst case scenario and say this is DC-side and you're still fine on an honest 550W (you're a bit over 50% load).
They also have some GTA5 benchmarks in there, and the GTX 970 is present too:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/page4.html (the first set of GTA5 numbers includes 4K; scroll for 1080p)
The extra VRAM is mostly superfluous - it won't hurt or help anything. My understanding is they're accomplishing it with higher density GDDR5 devices as well, so it shouldn't even have an impact on heat production (e.g. the 390X doesn't look like FireGL 8650 with the crazy double ranked memory), so if you have a better price on the 390/390X than the 290/290X, go with the 300-series (but really, they're the same thing, barring the name change and the 390s more frequently coming with 8GB (for extra fun: there are 8GB 290s too)).
On the games and WS and all that: there is no "hack" or "mod" to fix a Vert- game to not be Vert- (that said, there are some games that are only Vert- and/or only offer a certain number of resolutions because their configurators are awful; Morrowind is an example, and that *can* be addressed via the FPS Optimizer) and Mass Effect's UI problems are also just part of it. There is a third-party application that can dynamically switch ME's UI around to try and make it work "better" with multi-monitor or ultra-wide configurations, but its still a messy kludge (and still vert-). You'd be better off running it pillar-boxed on an ultra-wide monitor. Personally I'd probably just go with the 1080p monitor and be done with it, unless the majority of games you play heavily are Hor+ (e.g. if you play Mass Effect "once in a while" but play GTA5 and Skyrim "constantly" then the ultrawide might be fun if you can live with GTA5's UI quirks, but if you're playing them all equally or have a whole list of other Vert- games in your library that you frequently play, go with some other solution). Overall I'll just go back to WSGF as a resource - spend an hour or two perusing it and get a better idea of how ultrawide would mesh with what you're after, if it looks like it will be largely supported and you can live with pillar-box 1080p for a few games here and there then go for it, OTOH if it looks like you're frequently going to be relying on pillar-box or have a lot of older games that want to run at 800x600 or 1024x768 or similar, the ultrawide is probably not as good an idea. Having said all of that, I remember AOC making an ultrawide that can do dual input side-by-side as one of its modes, and that may be worth considering if you have a lot of games that aren't Hor+ with high resolution support, as you could run another machine or game consoles or whatever into the other input and use that extra screen space for more than drawing black bars. Just a random thought I had while writing this out. I also feel like it'd be worth at least mentioning Eyefinity/nVidia Surround and the old standby of triple 17" SVGA monitors - you'd get 3840x1024 (15:4) for games that support it (which is a lot of newer games), and a nice 5:4 center monitor for Vert- games (and that means you will have a bigger viewport than even 4:3 allows), as well as 17" SVGA monitors generally having very good mode support for 800x600 and 1024x768. If you have a big mix of newer and older games, and a lot of Vert- titles, that might be worth seriously considering as well. Price-wise all three of these solutions (a 1080p monitor, an ultrawide monitor, and the triple SVGA setup) will be very similar, and if you go with LED-backlit panels the power consumption and heat production will also be fairly similar across the board too, so it really comes down to your personal tastes, what your games/applications need, and how much physical space you have. Regardless of what you do, if you go for the ultrawide or 1080p monitor, I would suggest picking one that has good scaling options and functionality, in order to handle games and other stuff that can't be run at native resolution. From all of the ultrawide monitors I've looked at from AOC and LG they tend to have good scaling, and nicer 1080p monitors will have good scaling too, so it shouldn't be too hard to accomplish this.
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Honestly I've heard the "StarCraft is dead and no more will ever be made" before - back in ~2005 when WoW came out and everyone was decrying the death of Diablo and StarCraft because "all Blizzard will ever care about now is WoW and subscription money." And since then we've gotten Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 and both of those games have been expanded since their release (and neither is an MMO or subscription-model). I think it is probably safe to say that WarCraft as an RTS is 110% DOA, black tag, never coming back ever again and any hope of WarCraft 4 or some other WarCraft RTS is just a pipe dream, but I wouldn't be surprised if we got StarCraft 3 or Diablo 4 sometime in the next ten years. With the recent updates to SC2 it also looks like they're adding more content with the Nova expansion, and that doesn't appear to be wholly "e-sport stuff."
As far as the "it only has 3 races" thing - I've heard good defenses of both sides of that argument over the years, and personally I think StarCraft is one of the better-balanced RTS series to be released. Genie-based games are usually horribly unbalanced due to the "counters" thing (I'd say Galactic Battlegrounds is the exception); AoM and later improved on that significantly, but it still isn't to the level of StarCraft where each faction really represents a different ideal strategy. I don't think you need 50,000 different factions to be well balanced or offer diverse strategies either - Westwood generally only offered two factions in their games, but each one represented multiple different strategic approaches for the player, or you can have the DoW model where you have whatever gazillion factions (and corresponding gazillion expansions) and play out the different strategic approaches there (and that said, I don't think DoW is as strategically diverse as StarCraft, Westwood games, etc).
And all of that said, I'm just glad that at least one "big name" in game development is still at least trying to keep RTS alive. As much as the "golden era" games may rock, it gets old playing the same set of games for 10-20 years...its nice to see something new with a new storyline and new units and new characters.
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I don't know where the rumor that Skyrim "needs nVidia" comes from, but it's not true - AMD cards do just fine with Skyrim and other Gamebryo/Creation games. The R9 390 is a re-packaged R9 290 (the 290 series became the 390 series with slight clock bumps and extra VRAM; this isn't "fraud" or "a big scandal" or anything like that, and nVidia has been doing the exact same thing for almost twenty years with various products); why bring this up? So you can look at benchmarks that only feature the 290 and get more info. My 290X has no problems running Skyrim at 1080p on Ultra (it will do 144 FPS, but the game is unstable/problematic >60 FPS) - the 390 should be the same. The VRAM thing isn't even worth talking about - nothing uses 8GB of VRAM (and no, you can't somehow mod Skyrim to "break that barrier" - it physically will NEVER happen for Skyrim, or any other 32-bit application); there's a lot of mythology about "modern games" (you know, from 2010 or 2011) needing insane amounts of VRAM (multiple GB to hundreds of GB) and it just isn't true. Skyrim requires 512MB of VRAM on a GeForce 8, and will run on 256MB - you can go find videos on YouTube of 7900GTX 512MBs running it on Ultra (at 20-30 FPS). It just isn't all that demanding of a game by modern standards. Putting 4 or 6 or 8 or 12GB of VRAM on a card right now is basically a marketing stunt, since "they" can't offer significant improvements in GPU performance, and its unlikely that when games come out that use 4 or 6 or 8 or 12GB of VRAM fully, none of the modern cards will be able to hack it. GPU Computing stuff is another story, but that's not gaming (and this may actually be a minor reason that some higher-end cards are coming with extra VRAM).
As far as GTX 970 vs R9 390, it's kind of a toss-up performance wise. Both are very good, both will do very well with Skyrim (and honestly so will basically any other high end card of the last 6-7 years; again, it isn't this unslayable monster that requires a 30GHz dodecacore CPU, 2048GB of octal-channel DDR6 @ 4666MHz, 16-way SLI-EX with 48GB GTX Titan XXLs, and a 10-way RAID0 m.2 SSD array just to run at full minimum 512x384 in 16-bit color; machines from 2011 (when it came out) could run it maxed, and machines older than that could run it maxed, and so forth - you can load a silly number of mods onto it and completely butcher performance, just like you could with Oblivion and Morrowind, and while a reasonable amount of modding can justify a somewhat faster machine (than what would be needed to "run it maxed") after a point you're just throwing good money after bad and its better to (imho) give up on the "just one more" graphics mods and enjoy the game for what it is (and accept what it isn't)). Personally I'm very happy with my 290X, and while the GTX 900 series has various issues (e.g. nVidia lied about DX12 support, the 970 memory bug, etc) none of that matters for DX9 gaming (or honestly even for modern DX10/11 games); nVidia's "sure we lied but it doesn't matter and that's why we could get away with lying" line is unfortunately true (and I'm not saying, at all, that modern GCN will be a magic bullet for whenever DX12 games finally roll around - sure it supports them, but it may be like Radeon 9800 in the past; it was good for a year or two into the DX9 era and then completely overwhelmed by performance requirements). Point being, the 900 series can be just as viable a candidate, especially if you don't care about any of nVidia's anti-competitive business practices and go into it knowing all of the caveats it comes with.
Using Fallout 4 as a comparison, the 970 scores *slightly* better, but they're all in that "over 60 FPS so who cares" category (if someone knows whether or not FO4 actually "works" with higher frame-rates and can comment that'd be awesome):
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/fallout_4_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html
Skyrim is a lot less demanding, and will be running maxed either way. It is impossible to really speculate or guess what various mod configurations will do - it's reasonable to assume you can run "a lot" of mods, but you will eventually hit a point where you're either asking the game to be more than it is, and performance will be impacted by that.
As far as the PSU, an honest 550W would be fine with a 4690 and 390 (based on my own measurements and review data), so would 650W, or 750W, or 1250W, etc. The system will only draw what it needs (which will be around 70-100W at idle and around 200-400W at load (depending on load; modern GPUs (be it nVidia or AMD) are very good at dynamic power management)), and modern PSUs are efficient enough that "surplus capacity" doesn't mean significant surplus heat or waste power. If you're thinking you might go SLI or CrossFire in the future, I'd suggest a 750-1000W range PSU simply so you aren't replacing it when you add the second GPU, but if that's off the table, a quality 550W PSU should give you no problems. Personally I like the idea of "headroom" because it allows expansion with less fuss - say you want to add more hard-drives, or another GPU, or whatever; you've got surplus capacity on-tap. And since we're well into the era of 80-plus, that surplus capacity doesn't come at the cost of significant extra heat/waste/noise/etc.
If this mostly sounds like "it doesn't matter flip a coin" that's because it partially is - you're looking at generally excellent hardware on all fronts, and basically have to decide between different companies or brands based on non-performance items.
As far as the monitor - I'd take some time to browse WSGF's games database and look at games you like or play. Weird resolutions and ARs usually means more quirks, for example Mass Effect 1 never properly detected my 2048x1152 (thats 16:9, DC2K full-frame) monitor, so I could either "live with" 1920x1080 or use a resolution hack to enable the higher setting. I had similar experiences with a 2560x1600 monitor - its not that Windows ever has a problem (Windows generally doesn't care - whatever crazy display solution you can create, Windows can probably support), but games will either not natively support the resolution, or the UI won't scale right, or whatever. Getting into non-standard ARs produces significantly more problems (and I know Mass Effect will be one such problem, since the UI elements are fixed-aspect and won't scale properly), and going to "more wider" will be "more worse" with Vert- games (like Mass Effect), because you will get an even smaller viewport (ignoring that ME won't draw its UI correctly). Now, those ultra-wide monitors can do pillar-boxed 1080p but if that's what you're primarily going to have to live with, why not just get the 1080p monitor?
Here's the three games you specifically mentioned on WSGF - look at the example images, read what they have to say, and spend the time to search other games as well;
http://www.wsgf.org/dr/elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/en (Skyrim, like Oblivion before it, *is* Hor+ and will work nicely with WS resolutions)
http://www.wsgf.org/dr/mass-effect (Vert-, meaning the wider your monitor gets, the smaller the viewport gets)
http://www.wsgf.org/dr/grand-theft-auto-v/en (Hor+ but has fixed 16:9 UI and cutscenes)
Having toyed around with a few ultra-wide displays in the past, they're certainly spiffy looking, and when content supports them nicely (e.g. running 2.35:1 video, or Hor+ games like Skyrim) they do very well and look very good, but the added compatibility quirks and issues with Vert- games is a big turn-off for me; I say let someone else be the early adopter. Performance wise I doubt 2560x1080 vs 1920x1080 is going to be anything worth writing home about, so if you're after the ultra-wide, that shouldn't be a problem (now, if you go after a 4K ultrawide that runs at 4096x2160 or thereabouts, that's another discussion entirely).
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Agreed with Oubliette; there's not a significant difference and it isn't like you're going to have to make a mod that works "Windows XP only" or "Windows 7 only." Relying on third-party software (e.g. a mod manager to automate install of your mod) or something that's heavily outdated and only works (or only works properly) in XP would probably be a bad idea, but I get the sense you'd have to deliberately try pretty hard to create such a dependency problem.
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Graphics card is what's holding you back - the 6450 is a bottom-end value card (the 4550 was more of a mid-range card); it probably isn't that much faster than what it replaced, just newer. Rough on-paper comparison: http://www.hwcompare.com/10194/radeon-hd-4550-256mb-vs-radeon-hd-6450-oem/
Radeon does just fine in Skyrim though; wouldn't even entertain such a broad-sweeping generalization as "all Radeon will suck big time" or similar personally - my HD 4890 and HD 4870X2 had no issues with maxed or nearly maxed settings in Skyrim; it really isn't that demanding of a game, but you do need better than an entry-level/bottom-end card, especially if you're going to blast it with tons of high-res texture mods, ENB, etc.
On the Core 2, you have a single physical CPU (e.g. one chip in one socket) with four physical cores (this is, basically, the same thing as having four single-core CPUs in four sockets, except from Microsoft Licencing's perspective, where >2 sockets requires a much more expensive version of Windows); Skyrim generally only cares about single-threaded performance though (which isn't bad on a 45nm Core 2), so it isn't doing much with the other cores. That said, they do "help" in a more passive way, as other system tasks can be run there without impacting Skyrim (or impacting it as much), thanks to Windows' fairly intelligent handling of SMP (e.g. if you have something start-up in the background like anti-virus or a Steam/Origin/Battlenet/etc download or you're wanting to watch a DVD and play Skryim at once, having the multi-core CPU is a big benefit since Windows will intelligently multi-task across the available cores).
If you can return the 6450 to wherever you bought it, I'd do that, and get something more powerful - R7 250X or 260X or something like that would be a very nice upgrade. For example (again basic on-paper comparison): http://www.hwcompare.com/16861/radeon-hd-4550-256mb-vs-radeon-r7-250x/
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What Fighting?
Actually my fault, as the above links where intended for the OP.
Besides, everyone has the freedom to make their own choices i guess.
If you thing that Microsoft Essential is enough for an 100% secure environment, that's your probem.
So, my intention was to protect the OP, for securing his RIG as much as possible with some free AV programs.
You made your choice pretty clear. Let him do his own... :wink:
Re-read my post; "I am not, have not, etc trying to get into a deathmatch over "obobski wants MSE and is fighting anyone who challenges it" - I suggested it primarily because its free and simple."
I never said any of the other things you've attributed to me (and I don't appreciate having words put into my mouth) - I did not claim MSE (or any product) produces a "100% secure environment" (there is no such thing, especially on a Windows machine that has to be web-connected) nor did I mention anything about my own choices, what I do with my equipment, etc. So let's not go down that road and try to create a straw man, and let's not begin with the baseless appeals to morality and appeals to fear "my intention was to protect..." (because my implication you're saying other people aren't "looking out for OPs interests"). I suggested something that was quick'n'easy and provided two resources to evaluate a variety of other options (Windows Update and AV Comparatives), both of which fit into "let the person make up their own mind" (I've also suggested a few other products, and provided input from real-world usage experience on a few others).
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Another "direction" this may be occurring if the resolution is shifting, is if you're using DSR on the GTX 980, since the machine "sees" a higher output resolution when running the game in DSR.
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Even directx 12 enabled cards won't see the light of day of that performance gain in a very, very long time aswell. pci e is here to stay. They simply are not pushing the cards to there limit yet. I give it 5 more years or more.
Exactly, and that "5 years or more" has been the case since AGP 8x came out - by the time AGP 8x became a bottleneck for the graphics card, PCIe 1.0 had already been out for a while, and 2.0 was on the way out, and as PCIe 1.0 is starting to become a bottleneck for cards, 2.0 is already out, and 3.0 has been out for a little while (not all systems support 3.0 yet, but its certainly gaining ground). And it generally requires newer/more demanding software to necessitate a newer/faster bus, not newer hardware (e.g. Morrowind probably doesn't care if your graphics card has AGP 4x or PCIe 3.0, but Skyrim would care at least a little bit (I've tried it on PCIe 2.0 x4 vs x16 on the same card (GeForce GTX 660) and it was perfectly playable on either, and the "jump" to x16 was a marginal performance difference - newer synthetic benchmarks (stuff more demanding than Skyrim) saw a bigger performance difference).
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Even if i don't know your budget, this one will do the job just fine on Fallout 4 (1080p)
Very nice; I dig that red/white GTX 970 too.
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From your pdf you posted, MSE don't even gets to the award winning products.
"Microsoft was considered as a baseline and was therefore tested out-of-competition, due to which it is not included in the awards page. The score of Microsoft Windows Defender would be equivalent to STANDARD."
That above says it all. It's a baseline AV product and can't be compared directly with other AV products.
I don't understand why you always seem to want to fight about everything, but you do, and its quite annoying; I could happily do without it (and just to cut the head off of this: I am not, have not, etc trying to get into a deathmatch over "obobski wants MSE and is fighting anyone who challenges it" - I suggested it primarily because its free and simple - there are more rigorous/aggressive products out there that do a marginally better job of providing security, but that also will more heavily impact user experience, and cost money).
MSE is "baseline" because its included by default with recent versions of Windows; it scored in the second cluster (putting it ahead of a number of paid products, including McAfee) and is perfectly acceptable for typical users and typical usage scenarios. If you need something more advanced, I'd suggest Comodo, which offers an integrated anti-virus/anti-malware/firewall/web browser solution that lets you browse in a VM sandbox among other security features (this is paid software, however). The other free products you've suggested aren't bad, but don't offer anything significant over MSE, and (IME) will beg the user for money, and (especially in the case of AVG) throw *lots* of false positives with many videogames and their content protection systems (which gets incredibly annoying). The "awards" thing (if you read through the page) was only dealing with real-time protection and handling of flagged web-pages and such (which is not indicative of how secure or reliable the program is). The rest of your post is unsubstantiated FUD, simple as that.
MBAM is a passive utility that is generally only needed if you're actively trying to remove malware, and truth be told good browsing habits and a secure browser goes *a lot* further than anti-virus these days, especially a passive scanner.
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What kind of budget do you have? GTX 750 or 750 Ti isn't a horribly expensive card, and you could get a decent Core i3 and LGA 1150 motherboard for not too much more (maybe $300-ish for all of it), and then throw it in a case (can be cheap, can be expensive; whatever you want) and decent PSU (~$50) and you'd be set, assuming you have RAM, hard-drive(s), optical drive(s), OS licence, monitor, etc. I'd also give a look at some of the less expensive Radeon options - there's a lot of good stuff out currently under $200 for a graphics card (GTX 750 is probably on the low-side for knocking Fallout 4 out; check out Guru3D's review: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/fallout_4_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html - they're running maxed/Ultra settings, so if you're okay lowering the settings a tad the performance will improve some too - the R9 380 can be had for right around $200, and the GTX 950 for a little bit less; this isn't to say I'd expect the 750 to not run FO4, but it probably won't do it at 1080p on Ultra/max settings).
I may regret this, but what failed and why do you think you need to spend money on "data recovery" on the hard-drive? Unless the hard-drive itself failed (and if that's what brought down your gaming PC, just replace that disk), you can probably just hook it into another machine and the data will be right there.
Also, totally unrelated, but I've played Benny Returns in the past and found it very good!
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Are your desktop icons set to "align to grid"? Does calling refresh on the desktop fix things? Is the system changing resolutions or refresh rates between the desktop and Fallout?
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Even if it's not the best around as an Antivirus (MS Secutity Essential) - it's free and fast, however at the end you get what you pay for...
I advise you to read that article. -> http://dottech.org/14151/windows-best-free-antivirus-antimalware-program-microsoft-security-essentials-vs-avira-vs-avast-vs-avg/#editionlog
That article is insanely outdated by anti-virus comparison standards; it's essentially worthless as a result (it also reads like it was procedurally generated to be forum spam, the phrase "best free anti-virus" appearing in every sentence for example). Due to how quickly malware evolves and adapts, you really need comparisons that are as recent as possible. This is much more up to date:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/avc_prot_2015b_en.pdf (e.g. it is current)
For the most recent sample, MSE is out-performing McAfee by a % or so, and lands in cluster 2 - not awful by any standards, and again its free without any sort of begging for additional money. IME it also has less false positives/problems with many games, which was a continuous issue with AVG and Avast (again, IME).
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I wouldn't hold your breath. It will still be several years before the game companies get around to using it. They still don't make their games 64 bit and its been mainstream for well over ten years.
This, and the PCI -> AGP and AGP->PCIe transitions weren't instant, and competing proprietary standards *rarely* see widespread adoption instantaneously. Furthermore, PCIe is not "a huge bottleneck" or "a huge problem" and some (most?) of the technical stuff in the first post is wrong - the GPU does not have "224GB/s of bandwidth on average" - that doesn't even make sense as a statement. GPUs today have significant memory bandwidth, and they carry onboard memory specifically as a solution to I/O bus limitations (IOW this problem was discussed, researched, and solved, some twenty years ago). The game engine is 100% unaware of all this I/O bus too (because its running above the APIs which themselves sit above the HAL), so no "custom optimization" will need to be done. Tom's Hardware and other sites fairly regularly do benchmarks comparing PCIe bandwidth and performance, and pretty consistently I/O has been out ahead of real-world requirements for about ten years (since AGP 8x at least) (if you want a really giant example of this, PCIe 3.0 is fast enough for XDMA CrossFire which *does* show positive scaling when not CPU bound). As far as "Skyrim isn't the problem it will go as fast as your hardware allows" - this is also problematic (and its problematic for many other game engines too) as Creation assumes a more or less set frame-rate (and therefore inter-frame timing) and running faster than that will create problems (IOW the goal is not "more faster"). Overall this looks like a marketing stunt on nVidia's part, and yet another consumer lock-in feature to push people onto more proprietary nVidia stuff to sell more nVidia products to people (because now we'll go back to nVidia-approved motherboards to use nVidia GPU stuff - and that means higher prices), and AMD will either be forced to follow suit or get beat-up for "not being up to date."
If you want to look at it another way, Intel and AMD have both developed (and released) products that have better-than-PCIe between CPU and GPU (on APU parts), and have both released whitepapers demonstrating lower computational latency which can have a minor performance benefit, however the outboard PCIe parts (which are often more powerful) still can complete more complex tasks faster due to their greater computational performance (IOW the I/O is not "kneecapping" the system). This isn't to say I/O interfaces won't keep improving, but at least presently it isn't an issue for contemporary software.
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Microsoft provides free anti-virus which works well and isn't too heavy on system resources - on Vista and 7 its called Security Essentials, on Windows 8 and later it was re-branded as Defender. Alternately, Windows Update can take you to a page with other (often paid) options, but generally I'd just go with the MSFT option since its free as part of Windows.
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I get the feeling that's mislabled since "SSC" and "ACX" are EVGA trademarks.
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Ah that sucks, I guess I'll wait for it to go on sale :sad:
Thanks anyway.
Yeah I think qertyzeldar is right that its piracy to extract audio files from the game and distribute them as-is (its in that weird "fair use" grey area as far as I understand) - that said, Left 4 Dead goes on-sale on Steam pretty regularly, and you should be able to grab it for like $5 if you just wait it out. Unfortunately L4D1 is largely abandoned these days; I'm not sure if the samples you want exist in L4D2 but if you're looking at still playing the game beyond just sampling its audio, L4D2 would be the choice. I'm also betting that the sound effects they used probably come from a sample catalog (e.g. it isn't even Valve's property), and you could probably go buy that catalog (or that specific sample) somewhere - I have no idea how you'd figure out specifically what sound it was though. Maybe email Valve and ask? (wouldn't hold my breath for a reply but it its free to ask)
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Hey Obobski,
i was not clear on my previous comment. What i intended to say was that i would see what card is the best and THEN i would see what shop could give me the best price for that card.
Unfortunaly i'm living in Europe (Belgium) and the card you suggested is not availeble here. So if you have any other good suggestions?
EVGA is not that populair in Europe it seems, not much offering from that brand. I was original interested in the MSI brand but after seeing how many people have complaints about their customer service, it will not be my first choice anymore.
Thanks for the help!
Don't you have Leadtek or Gainward in Europe? Both of those had very good reputations when they still sold in the US. PNY has also been good, in my experience, but they tend to have more basic packages/cards. Asus is also a good choice for basically any component type they make.
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A) SSD vs HDD makes zero difference
B) Having Steam installed to "Program Files (x86)" is correct, and there's nothing wrong there. However you may need to perform read/write operations as an administrator and/or "take ownership" of the folder (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/ - this will be especially pertinent if you've recently re-loaded Windows and retained Steam and other file trees, or copied a folder from one Windows machine to another), depending on your account privileges and system settings.
You will also need to be significantly more detailed when describing the errors or messages you are receiving, specifying:
1) Where the message is originating from. Is it a Skyrim message? A Steam message? A Windows message?
2) Specifically what you did (SPECIFICALLY) to generate the message ("I tried to run a mod and it doesn't work" is way too vague -> "I tried to install the thomas the tank engine mod to my Skyrim\Data folder and the game is now refusing to start" is more useful).
There is no ".axe" filetype but you must have "steam.exe" for Steam to work (if Steam isn't installed properly you may not have steam.exe; this may be the case if you copied an existing installation (e.g. due to a re-load of Windows)). Steam putting the game in Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim is default behavior (and Steam supports being installed in a different directory than where games are installed), and there's nothing wrong with that (the "x86" folder is not magically endowed with super-special powers or anything) - if you want the game installed elsewhere you have to specify that when you download and install the game. I've had some luck in the past moving complete Fallout New Vegas installs (pick up the entire "Fallout new vegas folder" - not just \Data) around on different partitions and re-pointing Steam at it, and I would assume Skyrim could do the same, but OTOH I've also experienced this generate texture/mesh issues with some mods (never had problems with vanilla resources).
Just because Steam is "closed" doesn't mean its not running - it will, by default, minimize to tray, as opposed to completely exiting. Actually go into Steam -> Exit Steam (via menu bar) or right click on the tray icon -> Exit Steam and shut it down that way, and then confirm via task manager that the steam exe is not running (it takes it a few seconds after the exit command to fully close out in some cases). If you have Cloud enabled it can cause problems when trying to add/remove mods because it will try to back things up via the Cloud (you can disable this -> rt click on the game in Library, go to Updates, and then disable Steam Cloud Synchronization for Skyrim (bottom option)).
Savegames are stored separately, in My Documents\My Games\Skyrim\Saves (it properly follows Windows convention and will dynamically read My Documents from wherever its assigned per Folder Options, instead of a static path to C:\My Documents\). Those can be backed-up and transfered quite easily, BUT if you have a lot of mods running you need to ensure whatever Skyrim install you're going to load them up on matches their dependencies.
Finally, as far as marriage goes, there's no need for a mod - you can just add an NPC via console command. http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Marriage#Forcing_marriage_.C2.A0PC.C2.A0.C2.A0
There are mods that do things more cleanly (e.g. allow managed multiple marriages, divorce, etc and don't require use of the console) but for a one-off task I'd be inclined to use the console than create another dependency on the savegame. The game, out of the box, makes no discrimination towards heterosexual or homosexual marriages, and offers a huge list of potential marriage partners (all in the marriageable faction) of both genders, although there are some racial/gender combinations that don't have dialog (e.g. male altmer) so you should look for a mod that remedies that, if that's what you're after (it's been a while since I've tried forcing a non-dialog NPC, iirc it freezes).
Finally ensure you're properly trying to install the mod to your Skyrim\Data folder per its directions, and not trying to put it into the Steam folder or any other location. Readmes can be invaluable for more complex mods, especially those that have dependencies.
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Before you go off looking for the cheapest possible option, I'd suggest just skipping to the front of the line and getting an EVGA. They have one of, if not the, best warranties in the business, and generally offer OC'd cards with improved cooling (read: quieter + cooler all at once). PNY and Asus aren't bad either; I'd personally avoid MSI (their customer support can range from mediocre to god awful IME).
This EVGA looks to be among the least expensive on Amazon too, and it comes with an upgraded cooler and overclock:
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Quieter-Graphics-04G-P4-2974-KR/dp/B00NVODXR4/
While looking for that, I found this 980 for $459 AR, but I'm not terribly familiar with Gigabyte:
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GeForce-GDDR5-Graphics-GV-N980WF3-4GD/dp/B015NEB7BS/
Just something to think about more than anything else - it looks like its cheaper than other 980s at least.
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Thanks for the suggestions!
Right now I am not too picky and I don't mind playing in lower resolutions.
I am used to playing skyrim in a pathetic 800x600 low res textures since it came out for PC, so I don't mind running FO4 at that resolution either as long as it runs at medium settings.
OS isn't an issue, I have access to several free copies of windows since my job provides them for free, and older OS are often left there for trusted employees to take.
If you're okay with lower resolutions like that, you could even go cheaper than my build - knock the graphics card down a few more pegs and you'd still be fine at 800x600-1280x1024 range gaming. But the 380 will do it at 1080p (should be no question @ Ultra in Skyrim; Guru3D is showing it do Ultra in FO4 at ~50 FPS (I would regard that as fully playable but some people won't)).
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I think $500 is a bit too optimistic, but you shouldn't have to spend *tons* more; something like this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/th7vBm
No OS selected since PartPicker seems to love Windows 10, so just bop over to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Premium-System-Builder-Packaging/dp/B00H09BB16/ (you can get 7 Pro or 8.1 or 8.1 Pro or whatever - I'd avoid Win10 and make sure whatever you pick is 64-bit).
If you need more storage, make that change, if you can scav a DVD drive from somewhere, you can nix that part. As far as the rest, why I picked what I picked:
- Skyrim doesn't care about quad/octal/million-core CPUs and primarily wants good single-thread performance. I'm assuming Fallout 4 will follow suit, and that i3 will offer such performance in spades. It has HyperThreading so you get "up to" 4 threads, and for gaming I can't see it being much of a problem any which way. It's also cheaper and runs cooler than the i5/i7 chips.
- The 380 will run Fallout 4 on Ultra at respectable (40+ FPS) frame-rates per Guru3D's testing, and if you don't mind knocking a few settings down you can easily get the performance up to 60+ FPS (Skyrim will run maxed on older hardware than the 380, so it's not worth arguing about). (Source: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/fallout_4_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html ; it shouldn't be laggy based on this, but again you could probably put that over 60 FPS with a few settings changes - if your monitor is <1080p that would also boost performance (e.g. if your monitor is 1440x900 thats a lower resolution and will be less demanding on the card)).
- The ASRock board will save you a lot of coin and still accomplish what you want.
- The Ranger-M is a case I've used in the past and liked - it isn't expensive, it isn't flashy, but it is decently put together, simple to work with, and will hold an mATX system quite nicely.
- The Corsair PSU saves a lot of coin, and reviewed well at Tom's Hardware (source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-review-80-plus-bronze,3587-4.html)
- The RAM I just went with whatever was cheapest (same for the hard-drive, within reason)
- Ditch the "boot SSD" - this isn't just a cost saving thing, it's more that it's a pointless component by itself. If you really want an SSD, get one that will hold all of your data (or at least all of your application data); this will raise the price but could be done if you can bump the budget up a bit (what will an SSD do for you? improve how fast Windows loads, may improve level load times in some games, no impact on computationally-bound tasks, frame-rate, etc)
Some other thoughts:
- You may want to seriously consider an aftermarket CPU cooler.
- If you have a legal Windows licence you can re-use, or are using Linux/BSD (some freeware OS) that can save you money.
- You may want to get different fans for the Ranger M, if you don't like the blue LED fan (e.g. you want different colors or somesuch) - really just down to preference there.
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Regarding Blu-Ray, it's a technology I want to support. Coming from a background where decent internet is non-existent, and even now downloading a whole game is an overnight affair, physical media has a huge place in my life; I'd really like to see developers distribute PC games on Blu-Ray, just as they do for Xbox One and PS4 thus avoiding problems as shown by MGSV and Fallout 4 where only a fraction, if any of the game actually comes on the physical medium. I've been using Blu-Ray to play movies on my current rig for years without too much hassle. Once I get a half decent bit of software that'll run on Windows 10 I'll carry on doing the same.
The whole "support the technology" thing just looks like throwing money down a hole - physical media is largely dying, and that's (depending on your POV) fortunately, or unfortunately, just reality. I don't see software coming to Blu-ray or HD-DVD - they've had ten years to do it, and it isn't getting done. Of course it's your money to waste, but I don't see it as a worthwhile purchase.
Your points on futureproofing are extremely insightful. Still being a relative rookie when it comes to building PC's I really can see what you're saying here. I guess I'll always have to accept that no matter what I do I'm never going to be ahead of the game. Given the kind of pricing I'm looking at for this build I'm actually tempted to abandon it and build a HTPC for my living room instead; that'll give me the QOL improvement I'm looking for by moving the gaming rig out of the living room and give my family what they need. Once that's done I can save £1000 and build a new gaming rig with whatever is best at that time for the money; I don't have the cash lying around now and will need to build in stages, meaning my first components will be out of date by the time I get the last ones. Of course I'll take your advice on the RAM when the time comes to research the new build.
Correct. You will never be able to see into the future or anticipate what is coming or what will be needed, and there's no point in throwing a ton of money at it and hoping it sticks. If recent history is any indication, "next gen" will be yet more of the same. My advice, if you're after an HTPC and gaming setup, would be to get a new motherboard and CPU (Intel) and set that up for your gaming computer, and re-purpose the FX for the gaming machine. The performance benefits can be relatively large (see the benchmarks I linked that include AMD CPUs), and you could always upgrade the graphics card down the road if you felt the need (PCIe isn't likely going anywhere, and given that CPU performance is so stagnant for the last ~6 years, I doubt waiting another GPU generation would have any impact one way or another). Do keep in mind that nVidia has resorted to using artificial software/driver lockouts as a "stick" to get people to buy more (newer) GeForce product, so if you're after cost efficiency and longevity I'd probably go AMD (as long as the GPU is GCN-based they appear to be supporting it quite well). Of course nVidia may change in the future - I couldn't say one way or the other - but today this is what they're doing.
Regarding the closed loop cooling systems; I've actually got one in my current build. They're pricey, sure, but the beauty of them is the don't need maintenance, unlike a custom loop. If I build a custom loop and fry my rig through a mistake it's on me; if a closed loop goes bang within the warranty then I'm covered. While I agree that air-cooling would likely be sufficient in the kind of builds I'm looking at it again comes down to a QOL choice. The liquid cooled systems are quieter, plus they will extend the lifetime of the parts. I'm well known for wanting to upgrade early, but I always find other uses for my old parts (I've done this plenty in other areas of my life). #
My point is, any liquid cooling will never be as reliable as quality air cooling.
I'm also skeptical that warranty will cover all your other hardware. As far as a few other points:
A) The myth of quietness is just that, a myth. Air cooling can (and in my view should) be quiet or silent. I understand that the recent direction case-design and "custom PC building" has gone in the last few years means most air-cooled setups are lucky they aren't taking flight, but that's entirely unnecessary for cool and efficient operation.
B) The myth about "extending the lifetime of the parts" is also just that, a myth. Not much else needs to be said on this one, it just isn't true.
C) Air cooling shouldn't be regarded or painted as a "second class" or "low brow" choice, but again I entirely understand the direction that marketeers have taken us in the last few years, and that the "in" thing to do is cheap closed-loop systems, horribly designed cases, and other frivolous add-ons that make someone else a buck while not really benefiting you or your system's performance in the least.
Of course, as I've said before, it's your money and you can buy whatever you want - I don't really have any attachment one way or the other, since it's not my machine. This is just the result of my experience and opinions on the matter; do with that information whatever you feel is best.
Once again, thank you for the tips. I think I'm definitely going to hold off on the upgrade until I have some real cash in hand and the next generation is here. Seems daft to spend so much on technology that's coming to the end of it's supported lifespan.
See, I would agree in "holding off" until you can buy the machine (or at least the motherboard/CPU/RAM) at once (reason being that motherboards and CPUs are more or less tied together - there is no upgrade path for any recent Intel motherboard as they change sockets with every new release; RAM is fairly cheap and I'd personally rather not have a board and CPU on hand that I can't boot/test/use so I'd get the RAM too), but I wouldn't agree with "wait for the next generation when technology is coming to the end of its supported lifespan" - nobody said anything is "coming to the end." The point I'm making is that we're basically dead in the water these days (performance-wise) - Intel has released five or six generations of (roughly) equivalent performing CPUs, GPU performance growth is minimal (at best), and the only thing that's really prodded people along to upgrade is artificial software lockouts (a la nVidia) and replacing dead hardware. Your situation is a bit difference because of the AMD CPU - CMT will likely end up in the history books as another failed concept, and the unfortunate reality for today is that you have a very powerful CPU that performs very poorly (relative to the competition) in real-world workloads. The HD 7870 is no slouch, but it's certainly not the fastest kid on the block anymore - an upgrade there could very well make sense, but that's more of a "I can't tolerate not running full max ultra, I need full max ultra and it's worth X dollars to me" kind of thing, than a "I need a new card to support a new game" kind of thing. Swapping out your motherboard, RAM, and CPU can probably be done for under $500, and a new graphics card can be had for less than that - that'd give you a nice performance boost, and let the FX machine assume a role as an HTPC (and I wouldn't go with the GTS 450 or any other hot-running card for that; if the board doesn't have an IGP, pick up some cheap halfling card like GeForce 610 or Radeon HD 5450 - it'll make for a quieter, and more power efficient, system).
A random thought wrt the 7870 - I have no idea what they cost used (quick look on ebay and they're like $50-80), or if your present motherboard supports it, but you may give CrossFire X a try if they're quite cheap. It may be, by itself, be all the "kick" you're looking for in games, or it may still warrant the new Intel CPU/board. Just a thought to consider more than anything else (you may consider used hardware overall - a lot of older graphics cards take a dramatic depreciation hit and some nice deals can be had as a result).
i'm looking for a new laptop
in Off-Topic
Posted
+1, Alienware is probably one of the better choices though; you might also look at Asus' gaming laptops, but again as Wouter445 said, you will pay more for similar or lesser performance to a desktop or deskside machine, and the issue of overheating or at the bare minimum thermal throttling is a significant one for a high-performance laptop vs for most desktop/deskside machines.